eBay Seller protection for Cross Border transactions to 20th Jan

eBay Seller protection for Cross Border transactions has been extended right through the Christmas period until the 20th of January.

Cross Border transactions have proven remarkably tricky over the Christmas period, first with the French border closure due to Covid scares followed on the 1st of January by new customs checks. A number of carriers simply suspended services over this period, some planned due to not wanting 2020 parcels stuck in their network without customs paperwork which now we are in 2021 is required and others simply pulled the plug on services when the border closed.

There is some good news, for instance online retailers in Great Britain will not have to make customs declarations when sending parcels to customers in Northern Ireland until April and so Royal Mail are accepting shipments as has been usual in the past. However, on the flip side we have seen many Post Offices refusing European mail and Parcelforce shipments even once the French border reopened.

There has also been a disturbing impact to the uncertainty where we have clocked a number of online sellers suddenly refusing to ship to Northern Ireland. This is easy on some sites such as eBay as it’s a tick box in shipping preferences, although we’re not aware of a similarly easy opt out for other sites such as Amazon.

Refusing to ship to Northern Ireland was perfectly understandable from a business perspective – until the announcement from the Government on the 31st of December no one actually knew what paperwork was expected. For the next three months at least for Royal Mail the answer is none, but check with other carriers on what requirements they may have rushed to put in place – they have not have undone the requirement for customs paperwork even though it’s not required.

With all this uncertainty around Cross Border transactions, it’s no surprise to see eBay once again stepping up to reassure their sellers that their accounts won’t be dinged for circumstances way outside of their control. eBay have put three main protections in place:

• eBay will automatically remove Late Delivery counts and any related Negative or Neutral feedback received for Cross Border transactions between the 7th of December and the 20th of January 2021
• Your item not received count (INR) in Service Metrics and any related Negative or Neutral feedback will be automatically removed if you uploaded valid tracking before the delivery was scanned for Cross Border transactions between the 7th of December and the 20th of January 2021
• If you have to cancel a Cross Border transaction, eBay will remove those defects from your seller performance evaluation and any related Negative or Neutral feedback received

Any defect removals and related Negative or Neutral feedback covered by this extended eBay Seller protection for Cross Border transactions will be removed as quickly as possible but, there may be a short period of time when this information appears in your account before being removed.